Earlier today, Fujifilm released firmware version 3.0 for its GFX 50S medium-format camera. And with the update come two new features: Focus Bracketing and 35mm Format Mode.

Focus Bracketing enables focus distance bracketing for up to 999 frames, shifting the focal location with each shutter activation at a scale from 1 to 10. The new 35mm Format Mode, meanwhile, results in the camera using the central 36 x 24mm portion of the sensor, producing 30.5MP Raw and JPEG images.

"When using 35mm format adapters," the company explains in its changelog, "it will be easier to adjust the image size to 35mm format image circle lenses by changing the setting."

The GFX 50S v3.0 firmware update can be downloaded now from Fujifilm's website. Additionally, Fujifilm has also released a compatibility update for the H Mount Adapter G accessory.

Update Notes

GFX 50S Camera Body Firmware Update Ver.3.00

Addition of “Focus Bracketing”

The update will enable the photographer to shoot focus distance bracketing up to 999 frames. When the photographer start shooting, the focal location is shifted with each activation of the shutter by the step of focus shift set from 1 to 10.

Addition of “35mm Format Mode”

The update will enable the photographer to shoot central 36.0mm x 24.0mm (30.5M) cropped images as both JPEG and RAW files. When using 35mm format adapters, it will be easier to adjust the image size to 35mm format image circle lenses by changing the setting.

H MOUNT ADAPTER G” new firmware

The firmware update will expand the compatibility for the “H MOUNT ADAPTER G” accessory. Regarding the compatibility of lenses and accessories with H MOUNT ADAPTER G, refer to this URL.

Can anyone tell me how to get into full frame mode? All I can figure out is to go to mount adapter settings in the menus but it is greyed out (presumably because I have a GF lens on the camera and not an adapted lens with an adapter (???)I see no other way to get into full frame mode.

If it shifts 1-10 why do you need a max of 999 frames? Or does it let you combine focus bracketing with other forms of bracketing? I wish Oly would let me combine high res mode with focus bracketing...

This sort of extends the market here to FF users who may want higher res on occasion and makes those with a lot of glass looking for a mirrorless body have an alternative to Sony. (Yes, its a lot more money, but still much less than Hasselblad)

But I disagree with the notion that Nikon and Canon "give everything they've got straight away".

In any case, I guess it's better to eventually offer the fixes via firmware than to neglect doing it at all. None of the major players do it at a 100% level but Fuji seems to do better than most with the firmware updates IMO.

Nikon does provide firmware updates to ensure that new lens technolgies are supported where possible and to fix or improve things like AF. Whilst not as performance enhancing as Fujifilm's approach it is still welcome. Fuji needs to get the camera out on to the market and then use the revenue generated to allow further improvement of functions. Nikon could rake a page or two out Fuji's playbook. Software companies seem to use early adopters as beta testers.

I think there's a little of truth to both arguments... A lot of past Fuji updates have been shock full of bug fixes and features that are common to other bodies, 35mm mode could even be chucked in that camp I guess (since APS-C mode is quite a common feature for FF bodies)... OTOH focus bracketing isn't *that* common and it's a genuine value add via firmware update IMO.

Focus bracketing sounds great. It's easy to ever-so-slightly miss focus, especially when working quickly. It can be tough to tell in-camera whether you've focused on a subject's eye or on their cheek for instance, but it makes a big difference to the quality of the image, Also it allows for almost infinite control over depth of field, enabling focus stacking and tilt-shift effects that allow for deep yet selective focusing, even at wide apertures. A great feature. Should be standard in all cameras.

Just using regular bursts could help with mis-focus as much as bracketing tho... I mean, it depends on how it's implemented. From what I've seen, more often than not, it'll rack focus in one continuous direction until it's done. If it's moving the focus forward and you happened to lean back slightly then all the bracketing in the world isn't gonna help!

OTOH if you're firing a burst and happen to move in and out of the precise spot for perfect focus then you're still better off than had you bracketed. I'm not knocking the feature, I've used different permutations of it on multiple different bodies and I think it's great, stacking seems like an under used technique tbh (very useful well beyond macro which is where it most often comes up).

Yup, I do use bursts in these situations, and it helps but not every time. Sometimes for instance I'll think the camera is focusing on the head of a bird but instead it's focusing on a twig behind it, and since I'm shooting with a lot of telephoto and have a very shallow depth of field, the entire burst ends up with a sharp twig and a slightly out of focus bird. Or often I'll have continuous autofocus on (because I'm shooting fast-moving wildlife) and the camera just insists on focusing on the bird's breast instead of its face, which at 600mm equivalent makes a noticable difference even on a tiny bird like a junco or nuthatch. Focus bracketing would solve that problem nicely.

Granted if it's only racking in one direction that would be less helpful, and also a somewhat misleading use of the term "bracket" if you ask me. I can see why it would make sense to only move the focus in one direction during the bracket, but it should start from behind the subject and move forward, or vice versa. It shouldn't start *at* the subject and move away from it, it should start either in front or in back of the subject and move *through* it. I guess the usefulness will depend on the implementation.

I've seen some that let you pick the start and end point, with an ambiguous choice of points in between (since 1-10 is a different scale per lens), but that's still not very useful in a fast action/reaction situation... But yeah they could implement it so it's more useful for the situation you describe, a turbo/quick bracket where it jumps 'back' from the focus point just a couple steps then racks forward.

I imagine acutally going forward then back then forward would be a much bigger pain as far as accuracy and playing with any given lens' AF motors, dunno...

Yeah, it might be. I'm going off of the performance with my RX10 IV though, which focuses so quickly that I often barely notice the delay. A quick jump backwards would take less than a tenth of a second, and it could rack focus through 24 frames in one second. The nice thing about bridge cameras though is that since the camera only ever has to deal with one lens, the designers can make sure that the lens performs perfectly. It would probably be more difficult to pull off that kind of speed with a medium format camera, where lenses are interchangable and also larger. It would likely work better with some lenses than others. Of course, MF shooters probably aren't doing a lot of long-distance wildlife photography. For something like a landscape shot with strong foreground elements, it would be fine to just have the camera automatically rack focus from background to foreground.

What I'm really excited about though would be the ability to play tricks with the focus plane by selectively blending multiple images, giving effects that are similar to what can be achieved with a tilt lens, but with any lens and with even more flexibility. Also, increasing the depth of field when shooting at wide apertures—if you want the bokeh of an f/1.4 but you need a deeper depth of field, you could have that.

Good step in right direction. Now they will stimulate using 35mm lenses on this camera. Many of 35mm lenses ve bigger circle and this will be introduced soon. For example if Sigma 50 1.4 art covers this format with medium vignetting it will act something like 35/1.0. So it will be interesting.

Another story is that you can adopt many of your old or cheaper full frame lenses. 30mp is good enough. Also you can adopt telephoto lenses. Some of telephoto lenses will cover nearly whole GFX sensor.

@catdaddy: Yes, your statement of course is 100% true. But he talks about a different thing: FF lenses often have an image circle that covers a greater area than just 24x36mm. You will have (moderate) vignetting then when used on the GFX. Seems the Sigma 1.4 50mm covers the whole area of the GFX sensor, in that case the calculation is valid (if crop factor was correct).

whilst focus bracketing helps improve honing in on correct subject focusand focus stacking helps upping of subject focus coverage assurances, which is hard to see:it would be much welcome to offer higher magnification levels for (digital) LV focus-checkingwhen focus-peaking (intensity tweaking) may not work as well(the FF crop mode may be a partial extension of such an improved "magnified" feature)

Don't know how they implemented the 35mm crop mode, but I'd suggest they should give the option of still seeing the full sensor image in live view with a crop box. There is real benefit to being able to see what things are just outside of the frame and about to enter....

Wouldn't you be better off just using the whole frame to begin with, and have a specific crop in mind while shooting? Odds are that crop won't have a 3:2 aspect ratio anyway, or will call for a slightly tighter or wider crop than the 35mm crop. I realize that predefined crops can help you visualize a shot, but when you're cropping both horizontally and vertically, it makes less sense (unless there's a technical reason like the 35mm lens adapters).

It would be cool if Fuji could give a Fuji TX1 format crop, like Hasselblad does with its X1D.

I agree w/ ProfHankD. I don't know how the Fuji Implementation of the Crop Mode looks like, but the X1D provides an opaque filter / overlay (at custom definable level, like 50%!) for all the available crop modes in both the EVF as well as the rear display and I found very helpful for composition. Strong feature for me.

See the downloadable New Features Guide 3.00 PDF page 4. The change to 35mm format is relected in the display. So only black bars top and bottom. The crop mode makes perfect sense for telephoto lenses and results in more manageable file sizes with no or little waste.

Crop mode is helpful in composing the picture. Without it, you can't tell when you're lining up the picture whether what you want to be in the shot will actually be in the shot. I use the XPan mode a lot.

After, what, 35 years of AF development, we finally get this feature (AF bracketing). Can't understand why this hasn't been a standard feature for years. Well done to Fuji for being one of the first to get there. Kind of ironic that the first implementation is on a camera that perhaps barely needs it (sensor-based AF). Where this will be of most use is on phase-detect DSLRs. Always had a lukewarm/negative reception when I've argued for this in various forums because either 'it can't be done', or 'why is it needed?' Er, well if you care about getting your subject sharp it is.

You are missing the point IdM Photography, this is a “Free” firmware’s update as opposed to spending thousands of dollars on a medium format tilt shift lens (the ones from Schneider/ Mamiya run around 5000/6000 a lens) so kudos to Fuji for pushing the envelope forward once again, as someone already pointed out this should’ve standardized a long time ago.

FWIW I think an enterprising developer actually beat a lot of the other manufacturers to it as well...

There's an app on the Play store that works with all Lumix cameras and I'm pretty sure it preceded a couple of the other manufacturer implementations of focus bracketing - it definitely preceded Pana's own implementation* (it came out after Oly's update for the E-M1 tho, dunno what preceded that one, Pentax wouldn't surprise me).

* I think Pana's still uses their 4K photo mode too, which probably makes it the worst (and/or worse than the app), or do they have post focus *and* focus bracketing both? They've been throwing so much stuff at the wall lately it's hard to keep track.

In 35mm mode, you should see the cropped image in the viewfinder or on the screen when taking the photo, but the full image (not cropped) should be saved in the RAW file... This would help when you want to adjust later the framing... (and who cares about the additional space required?)...

how about using the image circle the most efficient way possible when doing square image ratio.... a 35mm crop mode would hamper that .. a full sensor read and manual in-camera cropping would be better

but will restrict the size of a square capture possible with a ff lens due to the nature of the 24 x 36 crop of a round image circle ... the ff image circle in theory can make a bigger square format image than thraditrional ff sensors allow ... the whole sensor read fixes that

They should produce round sensors... You would in that case select the aspect ratio while shooting, but would have the possibility to finetune or even change totally the aspect ratio/cropping in post processing...

They do? I am not aware of any FF camera that does not support APS-C crop even with FF lenses, but maybe I am missing a brand that forces automatic modes. The Pentax K-1 allows automatic selection as well as FF and APS-C overrides and a 24x24 square mode. The 24x24 is actually a 24x36 with crop meta-data, but the APS-C crop is a true APS-C and hence the buffer can cope with more pictures.

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